becomes every day more apparent, that unless some effective position is taken, and some other ground sought, than birth and wealth, upon which to trust their security, they must eventually be swallowed up by the combined force of other and more potent elements.

So comprehensive have been the improvements which the mother country has undergone since 1760, that this imperfect consideration of the political changes cannot do more than give an idea of their extent. We have seen that the royal prerogative has been definitely confined and recognized; that the nobility have ceased to control the popular estate, and to be the bulwark of kingly caprice; and that the commons have been elevated to the paramount influence in the political fabric. Equally beneficial have been the metamorphoses which have exalted the character of society. The moral tone of civilized circles has received a purer character; inasmuch as that vulgar colloquial taste which corrupted the highest classes a century ago, is now only practiced in bar-rooms and among the lowest orders. The elegant and polished association which has made Lansdowne House and Stafford House world-renowned, is in striking contrast with the boisterous gatherings which once scandalized Grosvenor Square, and even the Carlton House. That high standard of social communion which, under George the Third, was only to be found among the select literary coteries where Burke, and Reynolds, and Gibbon, and Johnson combined intellectual with social luxury, has now diffused itself among the aristocratic circles, and has superceded the coarse revelries of other days. Formerly, abject flattery, low wit, partisan rancor, and easy morals, were the best credentials to an intimacy with nobles and nabobs; now erudition and literary taste, courtesy of manner, and affability of temper are the requisites which enable men to mix with the great and wealthy. Literary merit, before unrecognized, or at least not encouraged by the court, now receives homage from every rank of society.

From the earliest periods, the agricultural interests of Great Britain have been nursed with peculiar tenderness; and formerly were enabled to subordinate the operations of com

merce to the supposed interest of land-owners. Feudal customs had settled and made permanent the revenues of estates; and landholders had made the commercial interests of the nation subordinate to agricultural prosperity. The century just passed has witnessed the transition from landed to commercial predominance. The great towns of Manchester, Bristol, York, Birmingham, and Lancaster have entered into and influenced national legislation, and have successfully surmounted the restraints by which the enterprise of trade was confined. It was no less a triumph to philosophical liberty when the reform was adopted, than to the interests of international traffic. At the present day, there appears to be a salutary reconciliation between the demands of the two opposing forces of human industry. Commerce has not bereft agriculture of a just and substantial profit; agriculture no longer dictates the high tariffs which formerly fettered commerce.

A remarkable contrast presents itself between the history of England and that of France, during the period we are considering. The latter nation has passed from legitimate monarchy to revolution, from revolution to despotism, from despotism back to legitimate monarchy, thence through two revolutions; and is once more reposing in the uncertain and stupefying quiet of an absolute rule. So capricious and aimless have been the efforts of that people to achieve a free government, that, after all the distresses of anarchy, they have failed to attain that which, without any disastrous events, England has attained. Starting together in 1760, under the government of an arbitrary king, possessing a proud aristocracy, and a restricted suffrage, nothing is more illustrative of the difference of character between the Anglo-Saxon and the Celtic races, than the grace with which the former have acquired, what with infinitely more effort, the latter have utterly failed to acquire. One hundred years have profited France but little, while they have regenerated the British people, as well as the British constitution. No period has so exalted English literature, as that between 1760 and 1860. Every department of letters has received illumination from the great votaries who have appeared since the accession of George the Third. As

historians, Hume and Gibbon, Robertson and Macaulay, Hallam and Grote, already rank in the estimation of the learned world, with Tacitus, and Herodotus, Livy and Xenophon. The Scotch school of philosophy has superseded that of Germany, by the works of Reid, Stewart, and Hamilton. Fiction. has been reformed and made brilliant by Johnson, Goldsmith, Edgeworth, Scott, Bulwer, and Dickens. Poetry boasts an innumerable host of disciples, and has outstripped all other departments, not only in the amount, but also in the excellence of its creations. The immortal Boswell and his patron Johnson, Southey, Lord Campbell, and Lord Russell haveably represented biography. Religion has found illustrious champions in Paley, Horseley, Hall, Chalmers, and Isaac Taylor. Criticism has also received more dignity from the writings of Carlyle, Brougham, Jeffrey, and Coleridge. The drama has emerged from the coarseness and levity which gave popularity to the "Beggar's Opera ;" and the writings of Sheridan, Goldsmith, and Talfourd approve themselves alike to the understanding and the moral sense.

If now we turn for a moment to the quality of British statesmanship within the past century, we discover, amid much ability, activity, and enterprise, the same selfish fidelity to British aggrandizement of which their history is a consistent record. No period has displayed a more complete devotion to this national passion. On this question Tory and Whig, churchman and dissenter, unite on common ground. Party issues are ignored, and prejudices forgotten, when this magnetic influence acts upon the body politic. The dispatches of foreign secretaries are notorious for their ambiguity, their subtlety, and the virtue they always possess to bear a double interpretation. The maxim of Talleyrand, that language is given us to conceal our thoughts, has become the spirit of the dispatches from Downing Street. The welfare of peoples, dynasties, and principles, must yield to the ascendancy of British magnificence. The seeming inconsistencies in her history, when tested by this standard, are reduced to entire harmony. When we see her statesmen at one time excusing despotism, and at another encouraging a people struggling for liberty; when sometimes she has united with other powers to

demolish dynasties, and sometimes to reconstruct dynasties, we must look elsewhere than in disinterested philanthropy to explain her rapid transitions. The statesmen of the present day have not degenerated from their predecessors, in a rapt and exclusive love of British predominance; and Lords Russell and Palmerston are noted for caution and cunning in the composition of dispatches. We cannot place much confidence in the aimiable assurances of a Secretary who could, in the short space of two months, explicitly denounce, and then turn round and as explicitly encourage the designs of Sardinia on Venetia; and both in official dispatches, in the face of all Europe.

We have endeavored, in the brief survey just attempted, to convey some idea of the various results which have come to the British empire from the experience of a century. That century, so pregnant with great events, not only on the continent of Europe, but also on this side of the Atlantic, has not been unattended with commotion and discord in the three Kingdoms. Repeated warfare with their neighbors across the channel, the extension of their empire by conquest over India, vain attempts to retain in submission their subject provinces in America, the riots of Wilkes and Gordon, the long contest successfully ended, with the first Napoleon, and numerous discontents of the people, and changes of ministries, have kept bright and active the energies of the British people. And amid the universal activity of that nation, literature and science, the peaceful pursuits of benevolence, of agriculture, and of religious zeal, have flourished, and have elevated the tone of every class. And, whatever regret the statesmen of Lord North's time may have felt when they were compelled to acknowledge the independence of their revolted. colonies, we believe that the great mass of the English nation looks with pride upon the growth of these States; who use the English tongue, who are the offspring of a common ancestry, who were ruled for centuries by English Kings, and whose habits, tastes, and sympathies partake of prejudices engrafted on our soil while English colonies; and that, despite the craft of politicians, the malevolence of hostile factions, and the selfish complaints of capitalists, they would view with grief the disseverance of the American Union.

ARTICLE VI.—THE HORSES OF NEPTUNE.

“Blne, rising, sinking endlessly " :

THE mythology of the ancient Greeks is deservedly esteemed one of the most beautiful productions of human ingenuity and taste. It is not, of course, the religion itself that thus challenges our admiration. That was but a scheme of the grossest paganism. The dwellers on Olympus were in their nature only Greeks, and it would be difficult to show in what respect the character of almighty Zeus is superior to that of Alexander of Macedon. But the superstitions of the common people were, by their artists, chiseled into shapes of such matchless beauty, and by their bards set to such divine music, that we are charmed with the manner notwithstanding the subject. Phidias, Callicrates and Ictinus, enshrined the deities of their country in a Parthenon; and to the sound of Homer's lyre arose the walls of a temple, far more enduring, from whose crowded frieze not a single figure has ever fallen. While the material splendor of the proud Ionian civilization, that frowned upon the vagrant Homer, has sunk into the gulf of unrecorded ruin, the Homeric fables still survive the universal wreck and flux of things. So true is it, as Hazlitt says, that words are the only things that last forever.

What, however, is most worthy of our attention in the ancient mythology, is the cccult meaning involved in many of the fables, as in the allegories of Psyche, Io, and Persephone. The perseverance of scholars has unlocked very many of these treasures, and, perhaps, more await their interpretation. A German scholar, Voelcker, who investigated this dark subject with an ardent enthusiasm, has declared that in these studies we must set out with the fixed conviction that every myth has concealed within itself its own peculiar signification. Without conceding this, it may at least be claimed that the field is open to conjectures and hypotheses, and these may be safely